The Ghost Pirates (Standalone) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Ghost Pirates
Series: Standalone
Author: William Hope Hodgson
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Adventure
Pages: 179
Words: 50K
Publish: 1909

Long, slow and with barely a supernatural menace until right at the end. Of course, the end ends with the ship being dragged under the sea by ghost ships while the crew is murdered by either ghost pirates or transdimensional pirates. So it ends with a bang!

Lots of little things happen on the ship leading up to that, but it could all be chalked up to nerves or accidents. Except our narrator, and one or two other sailors, have seen insubstantial man shapes at various times at night. I guess this would be called a “slow burn” horror story and boy howdy, is it slow. At least with The House on the Borderlands we had the scary pig things almost from the get-go. Here it is just hints and little bits of unnerving happenings. Not nearly enough in my opinion.

I can see why Hodgson has been forgotten over the years. His writings were fully of his time and did not, and have not, transcended into that timeless realm that we associate with The Classics.

The cover here is pretty good. It represents the ending of book unfortunately. Something this scary should have been the foundation, not the widow’s walk.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

The novel is presented as the transcribed testimony of Jessop, who we ultimately discover is the only survivor of the final voyage of the Mortzestus, having been rescued from drowning by the crew of the passing Sangier. It begins with Jessop's recounting how he came to be aboard the ill-fated Mortzestus and the rumors surrounding the vessel.

Jessop then begins to recount the unusual events that rapidly increase in both frequency and severity. In the telling of his tale, Jessop offers only sparse interpretation of the events, spending most of the time relating the story in an almost journalistic fashion, presenting a relatively unvarnished description of the events and conversations as they occurred.

He describes his confusion and uncertainty about what he believes he has seen, at times fearing for his own sanity. He eventually hears other members of the crew speak of strange events, most of which the rest of the crew pass off as either bad luck or the result of the witness being either tired or "dotty". Jessop only offers brief personal interpretation; he states that while he cannot discount the idea that the beings plaguing the ship may be ghosts, he presents his theory that they may be beings from another dimension that, while sharing the same physical space as theirs, are normally completely separated to the extent that neither dimension is aware of the existence of the other. He offers only vague, superficial suggestions as to the cause of his theorized dimensional breach.

Afterlife (Resident Evil #4) (2010 Movie)

 

Movie Details:

Title - Afterlife
Series – Resident Evil #4
Director – Paul WS Anderson
Release – 2010
Rating – R
Time – 1hr 37min

My Thoughts:

At the end of RE: Extinction, Alice finds a laboratory chock full of clones of herself. Afterlife starts with Alice, apparently alone, attacking the Japanese headquarters of the Umbrella Corporation. It doesn’t take long for us viewers to realize there are a bunch of clones and their goal is the Head of Umbrella, Chairman Wesker. He escapes on a superplane and destroys the headquarters with some sort of super implosion bomb and kills all the Alice’s there. The original Alice is hiding on the plane and attacks Wesker and he injects her with a super-anti-virus serum that takes away all of her super human abilities. They then crash into a mountain (eye roll moment) and Alice walks away, despite being “just regular human” now. The rest of the movie then begins. You can read about in the synopsis if you wish.

The opening to this movie was spectacular in my opinion. It shows the spread of the T-virus in Japan and just shows some Japanese lady standing in the rain while everybody walks by her. The scene ends when someone makes eye contact and she attacks the poor schlub. The music was a heavy tempo and matched the rain atmosphere perfectly.

There is a lot going on on this movie. Japan, then Alaska, then Los Angeles and then a boat in the ocean. Comparing it to the original Resident Evil movie, I found that I liked the claustrophobia and smallness of the first movie over this sprawling and wide open kind of movie. Zombies don’t feel like much of a threat when you have the entirety of Los Angeles to hide in. Of course, the director gets around that by having every single zombie in the city surrounding the one place the survivors are hiding. And the zombies are evolving so they can dig through concrete and are smarter. Oh, and some of them can thrive in a water environment. I really didn’t think about that and if I were you, I wouldn’t either. Or your brain might shutdown from “Doesnotmakeanysensitus”.

In this movie, we get two souped up badguys who are infected with the T-virus. First up is the Axeman and boy is he a bigboy! He reminded me of the Nemesis monster from the second movie, RE:Apocalypse, just bigger and badder.

The second is Chairman Wesker after he infects himself with the T-virus. He looks normal, just like Alice did when she was infected, but just like her, he’s faster, stronger and just “more”. He also has some sort of carnivorous plant thingy inside him that keeps trying to come out of his mouth. It was disgusting, in other words, it was perfect for a Resident Evil movie, hahahaa.

The ending is pitch perfect Resident Evil. Alice and her cohorts have destroyed the badguys, rescued a lot of innocent people and are about to start looking for more innocents to rescue, when all of the sudden, da da dum, Umbrella Corporation literally swoops in at the last second to ruin everything! And that is how the movie ends. Awesome!

The music fit the movie but sadly, the Manson Umbrella Corporation theme song was not part of this. As far as I’m concerned, that piece of music should have been in every movie, tying Umbrella together as the overarching enemy in the movie series. Plus, it is just a wicked cool piece of music. Ahhh well, life is just filled with disappointments ;-)

I don’t know if I enjoyed this movie more because of the previous one or if I just thought this was cool. Whatever the reason, I thoroughly enjoyed this. My only real complaint would be how big and wide open a lot of the movie was and I wasn’t a fan of that.

Stay tuned as Alice’s Adventures in Umbrella Corporation Land continues next month with the penultimate movie in this series.

Synopsis from Grokipedia:

Click to Open

In Resident Evil: Afterlife, set in a post-apocalyptic world devastated by the T-virus outbreak, Alice leads an assault on the Umbrella Corporation's Tokyo headquarters using an army of her own clones to target CEO Albert Wesker.[4] The clones overrun the facility, but Wesker triggers an explosion that wipes them out, then injects the original Alice with a serum during their aerial escape attempt, stripping her of her superhuman enhancements and leaving her as a normal human.[4] Their aircraft crashes, but Alice survives and begins a solitary journey across the wasteland six months later, tracking a distress signal from a purported safe haven called Arcadia in Alaska, which promises shelter and supplies to any survivors.[4]Alice's search uncovers no living humans until she encounters a mind-controlled Claire Redfield on an abandoned beach; after subduing and freeing her from Umbrella's device, the two fly toward Los Angeles, where they crash-land on the roof of a maximum-security prison besieged by zombies.[4] There, they join survivors led by Luther West, including Angel, Bennett, and others, who reveal Arcadia is actually a cargo tanker ship anchored off the coast that has gone silent.[4] To escape the encroaching undead horde, including a massive axe-wielding mutant dubbed the Executioner, the group frees a imprisoned survivor, Chris Redfield—Claire's brother—who knows a path to the coast via the sewers.[4] Betrayed by Bennett, who kills Angel and steals their plane, Alice, Claire, Chris, Luther, and a few others battle through the tunnels; Luther is trapped in a collapse, presumed lost, while the rest reach the Arcadia, only to discover it as an Umbrella trap filled with experimented-on prisoners, including K-Mart from Alice's past allies, who was captured by Umbrella.[4]Exploring the ship, Alice learns of her cloned origins through Umbrella's records and confronts Wesker, now enhanced beyond control by the T-virus, who seeks to assimilate her as the perfect host to stabilize his cannibalistic urges.[4] Alliances form with Luther, who emerges alive to aid the group, and the survivors—including Alice, Claire, Chris, and K-Mart—engage in climactic battles against Wesker, ultimately impaling the latter and relocating a purge bomb to destroy his escaping helicopter, seemingly ending his threat.[4] However, as Alice broadcasts the Arcadia's location to draw more survivors and repurpose it as a true sanctuary, an Umbrella assault fleet arrives, led by the mind-controlled Jill Valentine, signaling ongoing conflict.

Extinction (Resident Evil #3) (2007 Movie)

 

Movie Details:

Title - Extinction
Series – Resident Evil #3
Director – Russell Mulcahy
Release – 2007
Rating – R
Time – 1hr 34min

My Thoughts:

This was my least favorite of the movies so far, and if memory serves, of the entire 6 movie franchise.

Firstly, Alice now has superpowers. Yeah, they are “psychic” powers, but it amounts to the same thing. She’s not just a kickbutt heroine any more and I really didn’t like that change. One example of this was when she meets up with the convoy and saves them all from undead crows. She uses her jedi mind powers to burn up the entire sky full of crows.

Then there is a scene near the end where some superzombies are transported to where Alice and the convoy are (Las Vegas) to kill everyone and capture Alice. It is one shipping container, but by the end of the fight scene, I counted over 50 superzombies. They kept coming out of the container like clowns out of a clown car. The numbers were simply impossible.

My final complaint is the big boss at the end. The Big Boss Fight for each of the RE movies doesn’t tend towards the long and drawn out and while I’ve been ok with that, this time I just wanted more. I don’t know why, but this Tyrant felt like he should have had more time as the Tyrant and less time building up to him becoming the Tyrant. It didn’t help that he had to share screen time with the Chairman of Umbrella Corporation.

Now, what I did like. I LOVED that almost the entire movie took place during daylight hours. I could actually see everything going on. I loved how the opening mimicked the first opening, so there was that slight sliver of “did I get the wrong movie?” feeling. It started us as viewers on the back foot and that was great. While I complained about various things above, they did provide for a lot of intense action scenes and that is what Resident Evil movies are all about.

The music was pretty good too. We got back to the hive music, which just represents Resident Evil to me.

I also watched the commentary track for the movie. It was wicked weird though. There were 3 guys talking about it, but it was obvious there were two different commentaries going on at once. Two guys were talking to each other while the other guy was simply monologuing the entire time. It was so obvious, and like I said, weird, that it really threw me out from listening to what they were actually saying. Kind of a waste of a commentary track if you ask me.

A decent addition to the franchise, but like I said at the beginning, my least favorite.

Synopsis from Wikipedia:

click to open

A cloned Alice wakes up in a mansion, wanders through its halls, and is forced to escape several security traps. However, she is eventually killed by a bounding mine hidden on the floor. Her body is dumped into a pit filled with dozens of other Alice clones, representing the failed results of the Umbrella Corporation's ongoing Project Alice.

Five years after Umbrella's attempts to cover up the contamination of Raccoon City,[a] the T-virus has spread around the world, causing ecological destruction to all life. The real Alice wanders the wasteland and, after fighting off marauders, discovers information in an abandoned notebook referring to a supposedly uninfected area in Alaska.

Simultaneously, a convoy of survivors led by Claire Redfield and Raccoon City survivors Carlos Oliveira and L.J. Wade travels across the country in search of supplies and safe harbor. While searching a motel, L.J. is bitten by a zombie. Fearing the harsh fate that awaits him, he chooses not to tell the other survivors about the injury. The next morning, the convoy is attacked by a murderous flock of infected crows. With the team nearly overwhelmed, Alice appears and destroys the remaining crows with her newfound telekinesis, though she falls unconscious. Awaking shortly thereafter, Alice is introduced to Claire and tells her about the notebook, convincing her to take the convoy to Alaska.

Isaacs' attempts to domesticate the infected lead to creating a new zombie breed. Albert Wesker's security officer, Captain Alexander Slater, reports on Isaacs' disregard for Umbrella regulations. Wesker tasks Slater with watching Isaacs, telling him to kill the scientist if he disobeys orders again. Tracing an energy pattern sent out by Alice's telekinesis, Umbrella triangulates her location. Desperate to reclaim Alice to achieve his goals, Dr. Isaacs sends his new zombies to ambush the convoy against Wesker's specific orders. During the attack, most of the convoy is killed, and L.J. succumbs to his infection, biting Carlos before he kills him. Umbrella tries to shut Alice down remotely, but she breaks free from Umbrella's programming and continues to fight. She finds Isaacs at the scene, and he is bitten as he flees via helicopter. Alice and a girl from Claire's convoy named K-mart use Isaacs' computer to track the helicopter's flight path, leading them to Umbrella's underground facility.

As the convoy arrives at the Umbrella Facility, Carlos, dying from his bite, sets out to sacrifice himself, giving some goodbyes to the convoy, including Alice. Carlos takes a tanker truck with dynamite to destroy the zombie horde blocking the entrance to the Umbrella Facility. The dynamite explodes, killing him. Alice and Claire get everyone else onto a helicopter to get them to safety, but Alice stays behind.

Entering the underground facility, Alice meets a holograph of the Red Queen's "sister" AI, the White Queen. She informs Alice that her blood can cure the T-virus, defends the Red Queen's prior actions, and reveals what happened to Dr. Isaacs. On her way to the lab's lower levels, Alice encounters one of her clones, which awakens but appears to die from shock soon after. Alice discovers Isaacs/Tyrant, defeating him after leading him to the replica of The Hive's laser corridor featured in the film's opening. Just as Alice is about to meet the same fate, the system is deactivated by the clone, who is still alive.

Later in Tokyo, Wesker informs his fellow Umbrella executives that the North American facility has been lost. Alice appears during the meeting, declaring that she and her "friends" (the other clones) are coming for him.

Apocalypse (Resident Evil #2) (2004 Movie)

 

Movie Details:

Series – Resident Evil #2
Director – Alexander Witt
Release – 2004
Rating – R
Time – 1hr 34min

My Thoughts:

Spectacle. Bloody, violent and furious spectacle.

Everything from the first movie is ramped up, except for the military style. There are Umbrella Corporation private soldiers and some of them end up hooking up with Alice and some other survivors, but they are not real soldiers. They make for good monster fodder though.

We start out exactly where the first movie ends, with some additional info to give us a larger picture of what is going on. The t-virus has escaped into Raccoon City and apparently RC is a walled city controlled by Umbrella. When Umbrella realizes they can’t control the virus, so they shut the city down, release a monster of their own to test it and it runs into Alice, who it turns out is another Umbrella experiment. So a city full of zombies, a few zombie dogs, a few lickers and then Nemesis. All the while an insane scientist is monitoring it all and thinking he’s in control. Oh, right from the first movie, Umbrella is shown to be thinking that they are in control even when it is apparent to anyone with half a brain that they aren’t. That’s half the fun, even as the situation spirals out of control, knowing that Umbrella is going to burn.

Speaking of ramping things up to an 11, well, a tactical nuke is involved at the end of the movie. It helps provide a count down to force the plot forward, but man, knowing that you have to survive and get out or you get nuked really amps up the tension. I liked it. I also enjoyed the fight between Alice and the Nemesis monster. Knowing it was the nice guy from the first movie just made it that much worse, which is the point of RE. Hold out hope only to yank it away again. That’s the formula and it works for the video games and it works for these movies.

Synopsis from Wikipedia:

Synopsis - click to open

Former security operative Alice and environmental activist Matt Addison escape an underground genetic research facility called the Hive after a zombie outbreak.[a] The pair attempted to expose illegal experiments being performed there by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella Corporation before they were taken into custody by Umbrella.

A team from Umbrella investigating the Hive is overrun by zombies, which spreads the outbreak to the nearby Raccoon City. In response, Umbrella quarantines the city and evacuates crucial personnel. Angela Ashford, daughter of researcher Dr. Charles Ashford, goes missing after her security car is involved in a collision during the evacuation. Meanwhile, disgraced S.T.A.R.S operative Jill Valentine returns to her precinct to urge her fellow officers to evacuate. Alice awakens in a deserted hospital and wanders the city for supplies while Umbrella evacuates civilians via the only bridge. At the bridge, Jill encounters her former partner, Sgt. Payton Wells, but a civilian turns into a zombie, biting Wells. Upon the outbreak reaching the bridge, Major Timothy Cain, leader of Umbrella forces, seals the exit, forcing residents back into the city.

After being abandoned by their employer, Umbrella soldiers Carlos Olivera and Nicholai Ginovaef team up with surviving police units to repel various zombie attacks. Their position is overrun; Carlos is bitten and infected. Meanwhile, Jill, Wells, and reporter Terri Morales are saved by Alice just before being overrun. Umbrella deploys the mutated supersoldier, Nemesis, who kills the remaining STARS before searching for Alice. Dr. Ashford hacks into the CCTV system to contact Alice and the survivors, offering to arrange their evacuation in exchange for rescuing his daughter. He makes the same offer to Carlos and Ginovaef, explaining Umbrella plans to destroy Raccoon City with a nuclear warhead to eliminate the zombie infection.

While heading to Angela, Alice and the group are ambushed by Nemesis. Jill kills Wells after he turns into a zombie. Alice fights Nemesis but is injured, leading her to draw him away from the others. Jill and Morales rescue stranded civilian L.J. and later meet Carlos to find Angela, though Morales and Ginovaef are killed. Angela reveals that the zombie outbreak stems from the T-virus, created by her father to treat her genetic condition, and she requires an anti-virus serum to avoid becoming a zombie. Alice uses some of the serum to cure Carlos. Dr. Ashford informs Alice of an extraction point with a waiting helicopter. The group reaches the rendezvous but are ambushed by Umbrella forces. Cain kills Dr. Ashford and compels Alice, revealed to be enhanced by the T-virus, to fight Nemesis. Alice subdues Nemesis but stops when she discovers that Nemesis is Matt, who was mutated by Umbrella's experiments.

Nemesis turns on Cain and attacks the Umbrella troops but is killed while protecting Alice. The remaining survivors seize the helicopter and eject Cain from it, and he is killed by zombies. As the survivors escape, a nuclear warhead detonates over the city, and the resulting blast wave causes the helicopter to crash. Alice sacrifices herself to save Angela and is impaled on a metal pole. T.V. footage attributes the blast to a meltdown of the city's nuclear power plant, obscuring Umbrella's involvement.

Alice wakes up in an Umbrella research facility and escapes with help from Carlos, Jill, L.J., and Angela. She also displays psionic abilities after telekinetically killing a security guard. As they leave, Dr. Alexander Isaacs, a top-ranking Umbrella employee, reveals that Alice's escape is part of Umbrella's plan.

Resident Evil (Resident Evil #1) (2002 Movie)

 

Movie Details:

Series – Resident Evil #1
Director – Paul WS Anderson
Release – 2002
Rating – R
Time – 1hr 40min

My Thoughts:

This movie, and the whole franchise in fact, is the kind of movie that shouldn’t work for me. Live action tie-ins to video games usually leave me apathetic at best to downright cold at worst. Now, my only knowledge about the Resident Evil franchise is what I garnered reading the horrible game tie-in books in 2011 (Umbrella Conspiracy, Zero Hour, Caliban Cove). I’ve never played the games but I have watched the movies multiple times and enjoyed them immensely, to the point where I bought a “Complete Collection” on bluray last year.

Resident Evil the movie is almost 25 years old and in some ways it shows. The scenes where it is “computer graphics” copying the style of the game is rough and uneven and not what you’d see today. Other than that though, I thought it holds up remarkably well.

I do have to say that you need to turn your brain off to truly enjoy these. This is a zombie action movie and you can pick it apart all day long. I suspect many of the roots of that come from the game itself but Hollywood does have a way of inserting its own stupidity into things, so I’m also blaming them. I’m not here to nit-pick though. But it is a fair warning. Turn your brain off and enjoy.

The music is spot on. You have a pulse pounding techno-something-metal whenever the action is about to ramp up or is happening. It is played a lot during times when the team is initially invading the Hive (the underground complex where everything is happening). It makes even simple scenes of the team running up/down stairs more engaging. But at the same time, it is not overused. I felt like whoever the musical director/choreographer was did a tremendous job of making the music add to the movie without overwhelming or distracting. I also really liked the theme music. Here is the opening theme and it is just plain creepy:

The progression of enemies is stepped just like in a video game. You start out with the Red Queen (the AI that is actually trying to keep the world safe from the T-Virus) and her defense mechanisms taking out like half the team. Four team members die in just one scene and I was a little disappointed it wasn’t spaced out more.

Then the zombies are introduced and the surviving members have to battle them, unsuccessfully at first as they don’t know that only a bullet to the head puts the zombies down permanently. Then Alice, the hero of the movie franchise, meets some doberman pinschers and whooowheee, they looked BAD! And one of the coolest looking scenes happens with that. She runs out of bullets and there is still one dog left and it leaps to attack her. She runs at a wall intersection and runs up one wall, pushes off it, bounces off the supporting wall and kicks the dog and breaks its neck. It is physically impossible but boy, it looked awesome!

Then the team meets the final Big Bad and it is some sort of humanoid mutating monster that is all exposed muscle and teeth and claws and a tongue like a whip. (I didn't use any of the actual scenes from the movie because they were all too dark, so you get this drawn version) It manages to kill off the remainder of the team and only Alice and some guy who was trying to save his sister survive. They make it out of the Hive just as the blast doors sealing it off come down.

Only for the two survivors to be medicalized by Umbrella scientists in bio-hazard suits. The guy has a t-virus infection that isn’t killing him and Alice is being kept under observation. The movie ends with her waking up and ripping out all her monitors and escaping the lab. She is in Racoon City and it is obvious the t-virus has escaped. She grabs a shot gun and that’s how the movie ends.

I am happy to own this movie and am so glad it has stood up to repeated viewings. This was a LOT more than I was expecting to write, which goes to show how much I liked it :-D I’ll also add that you shouldn’t expect this much wordage from me when I review the next 5 Resident Evil movies. So stock up on shotgun shells, sharpen your machetes and make sure your harley davidson motorcycle is fueled up, because we’ve got a lot of adventure left to get through!

Synopsis from Wikipedia:

Click to Open

Underneath Raccoon City, a genetic research facility called the Hive is owned by the Umbrella Corporation. A thief steals the genetically engineered T-virus and contaminates the Hive with it. In response, the facility's artificial intelligence, the Red Queen, seals the Hive and kills everyone inside to prevent the virus from leaking into the outside world.

Alice wakes up in the bathroom of a deserted mansion, suffering amnesia. An unknown person tackles her as a group of commandos led by James Shade breaks in. Alice's attacker claims to be Matt Addison, who just transferred as a cop in Raccoon P.D. Alice and Matt are ordered to go down to the Hive with the group, where they find another amnesiac, Spence, hidden in their train. The commandos explain that everyone in the group except Matt is an employee of the Umbrella Corporation, and Alice and her partner Spence were assigned to guard the Hive's secret entrance beneath the mansion under the pretense of being married.

A laser defense system kills Shade and three more commandos outside the Red Queen's chamber. Despite the Red Queen's pleas for the group to leave, Kaplan disables it, causing the power to fail and all of the doors in the Hive to open. This releases the zombified staff and containment units holding Lickers, creatures created through experimentation with the T-virus. The horde attacks the group, and J.D. dies while the rest are separated. During that moment, Rain loses her keys and Matt, taking advantage of the chaos, sweeps the keys to escape his handcuffs. Alice starts regaining her memories while Matt finds his sister Lisa, who is one of the zombies. Alice saves him, and Matt explains that he and Lisa were environmental activists. Lisa infiltrated Umbrella to smuggle out the evidence of illegal experiments and shut Umbrella down. Alice remembers that she was Lisa's contact in the Hive but does not tell Matt. The survivors reunite at the Red Queen's chamber, where the commandos explain they have one hour before the Hive traps them inside automatically. Alice and Kaplan activate the Red Queen to find an exit; they rig a remote shutdown to ensure her cooperation.

As they escape through maintenance tunnels, zombies ambush them, and a reanimated J.D. bites Rain before she shoots him dead. They reach safety except Kaplan, who is bitten and separated from the group. Alice remembers that an anti-virus is in the lab, but they find it missing. Spence's memory returns, revealing he was the thief who stole and purposefully released the T-virus in the beginning; he hid both the T-virus and anti-virus on the train. Spence turns against the others but is bitten by a zombie before trapping the survivors in the lab. Spence retrieves the anti-virus but is killed by a Licker. The Red Queen offers to spare Alice and Matt if they kill Rain, who has been infected. A power outage occurs. Kaplan appears, having shut down the Red Queen to open the lab doors. The group heads to the train, where Alice retrieves the anti-virus and kills a reanimated Spence.

On the train, they inject Rain and Kaplan with the anti-virus. The Licker attacks them, clawing Matt and killing Kaplan. Alice subdues the Licker before a zombified Rain attacks Matt, the anti-virus having failed to cure her. He shoots Rain dead.

At the mansion, Matt's wound begins mutating. Before Alice can give him the anti-virus, a group of Umbrella scientists seizes them. They reveal Matt is to be put into the Nemesis Program, and the Hive is to be re-opened for an investigation into the incident.

Sometime later, Alice wakes up at the Raccoon City Hospital strapped to an examination table. She escapes outside, only to find Raccoon City in ruins. She retrieves a shotgun from an abandoned police car for defense.

The House on the Borderlands (Standalone) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The House on the Borderlands
Series: -----
Author: William Hope Hodgson
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Horror
Pages: 157
Words: 52K
Publish: 1908

(This book was recommended by Snapdragon Alcove and the link goes to her review from 2023)

I am putting the “horror” tag on this even though it could just as easily go into the fantasy camp. Mainly because the story does start out very horrifyingly. An old man is living with his aged sister at a big old empty house and he starts seeing these horrible pigmen around the place. They are trying to get into the house, he has to board the place up, lock his sister into her room so she doesn’t accidentally open a door and keep the pigmen at bay with his small arsenal of guns. That part was genuinely scary. Then throw in the fact that the author gives hints that maybe this is all happening in the head of the main character and the “creep” factor rockets off the charts for me.

Sadly, then we get a section of out of body experience that was extremely similar to the Time Traveller in Wells’ The Time Machine, where he just watches the earth age and looks at things on a cosmic scale. It was genuinely boring.

Then Hodgson tries to throw in some sort of romance thing. It was the worst part of the book because it was so hamhandedly handled. She doesn’t even get a name, just “My former love”. Oh my goodness, it was like reading something a twenty year old would have written. It made me cringe. Then he went back to the cosmic journey thing and I was bored again.

Thankfully, the old guy comes back to earth with no time having passed (hence another hint that it all might be in his head) and the pigmen assault the place again. Creepy.

So this read was a complete mixed bag. I enjoyed it enough to give it 3stars and decide to seek out a Complete Works of Hodgson’s stuff. Public Domain is a wonderful thing. But I am tempering my expectations because of his cosmic passage parts of the story. I fully expect to be bored out of my skull by some of his dumbassery in future books.

I must also admit that this got a bit of a ratings bump just because of the cover. I mean, how awesomely scary looking is that? Wicked, man…

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

Two men on a two-week fishing holiday in remote western Ireland are surprised to discover a strange abyss. On a rock spur above this pit they find ruins and buried in them a journal, which they read.

The author of the journal introduces himself as an old man who has lived for years in an ancient house accompanied only by his sister, who serves as housekeeper, and his dog, Pepper. He has no contact with the local inhabitants, who say he is mad. The house is circular in form and its weird appearance includes peculiar decorations that suggest leaping flames. It has had an evil reputation for centuries and had been empty for many years when he purchased it. The diary will record his strange experiences and thoughts.

Late one night, as he was reading in his study, the light suddenly turned green and then red. Pepper hid under his chair and he sat still, frightened. The red light went low, and he was no longer afraid. The far side of the room became a vision of a vast empty plain. He floated like a bubble into space, leaving the earth and sun behind as he travelled into utter darkness and despair. He reached the world of the vast plain, whose sun is a wreath of red flame. He was brought to an arena: an immense green jade copy of his own house, at the centre of a circle miles across, circled by mountains containing hundreds of huge idols of Beast-gods and Horrors. As he nears the huge building, a humanoid creature with the repellent head and face of a huge swine is trying to get into the House. The Swine-creature suddenly and horribly moves toward him, but he is borne upward, then reverses his travel through space to return to his study.

Several months later, horrible man-sized creatures with dead-white skin emerge from a nearby Pit and assault the House. The Swine-Things are strong and intelligent but are unable to break in; after a night and day in which the Recluse kills some of them they disappear. He is terrified by the violent creatures and he waits several days before leaving the House with Pepper to search the former gardens outside.

A week later, he and Pepper explore the Pit that appears to be the source of the Swine-Things. A tunnel leads to an immensely deep abyss. Water flows down the tunnel and the struggle of wading against it to get back out is exhausting. Two weeks afterwards the Pit has become a lake. He revisits a trap door in the Cellar, realizing that it opens to the bottomless abyss.

Asleep in his study, the Recluse awakens into a place like a mist of light and meets his lost love. She calls the place the Sea of Sleep, and implores him to leave the evil House, but admits that they would never have met again had he been anywhere else.

The journal starts again, with the passage of time increasing in speed. Days and nights pass more and more quickly, the sun and moon become flickers and years blur. Pepper's body, then his own, crumble into dust. The House falls, the world fades, time slowly grinds to a halt and the solar system ends with his perception of an immense green star, celestial globes, and another timeless meeting in the Sea of Sleep with the lost love. He is brought again to the Arena and into the great House. He is again in his own study, with time running normally.

The malicious Swine-creature from the Arena inflicts a luminous fungal growth on a dog and the Recluse is barely able to stop himself from letting it into the House. He has also contracted the disease, and the manuscript ends with the man in his study as the creature comes through the trap door in the Cellar.

The two men recover from reading the journal and return to fishing, making no attempt to revisit the horrible pit. Their driver interviews an old man in the local village who remembers the evil house that everyone avoided had once been occupied by an unsociable old man and his elderly sister. Once a month, a man who told the villagers nothing took supplies to the house; years went by until suddenly that man excitedly reported that the house had disappeared and there was now a chasm where it had been.

Lockdown Tales #2 (Polity #23) 4Stars

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Lockdown Tales #2
Series: Polity #23
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 337
Words: 150K

---

I read the first set of Lockdown Tales in ‘21. It was a strictly Polity universe set of stories and I enjoyed them. This time around, not every story was in the Polity universe. I’m still including this in my Polity numbering for the series, but there are one or two that aren’t Polity.

In his intro, Asher really lets loose against Civil Authorities overstepping the boundaries setup for them and how people just let them. He sounded very much like me in fact, or I sound like him (he’s older, so age before me). It made me laugh and cry because I completely agreed and yet a majority of the world didn’t, as they let fear, lies and manipulation determine their fate instead of taking it into their own hands.

I went into this collection thinking I would try to take notes on each story and write up my review that way, the way Marzaat (and others) do. However, that resolution didn’t last very long. With nine stories, each is a bit longer than just a “short story”, so I had to pay attention. I can’t read, pay attention, take notes AND enjoy the story all at the same time. So something had to give. Obviously, I just decided to not enjoy the stories and sacrifice my enjoyment for your edification. Because nobody is as important as you.

And if you believe that, you need some serious help. No, seriously, get some professional help. You rank about the same as monkey poop to me. Honest.

Therefore the notes went right out the window.

Xenovore was VERY similar to the previous book Weaponized and Asher even mentions that in his introduction. I was glad he did or else I would have felt very gypped. It wasn’t the same story but had enough of the same elements that I wished it had been shorter.

An Alien on Crete was a non-Polity story about an alien coming to Earth to awaken Earth’s guardian, blah, blah, blah. It didn’t engage me at all.

Skin was a story about a Polity citizen getting a new skin from a doctor who had run up against Polity rules. Of course, things go horrifically wrong and the skin ends up slithering away to the ocean. It was awesome.

Antique Battlefields was a tale of the Quiet War, when the AI’s took control. For me, this has always been the achille’s heel of the Polity Universe. I regularly overlook it every time I read a Polity book. The idea is that the AI’s are better than us without our corruption. We created them and thus they are inherently broken. That doesn’t fit Asher’s world view and so he just ignores it. It was interesting to see a quick snapshot of the war, but it really brought the aforementioned issue to my mind and so I just couldn’t ignore it.

Ha, would you look at that? I did ALL that without a single flipping note. My brain is awesome, that’s all I have to say. Suck it AI, you’ll never be anywhere near as talented in so many fields as I am.

There was one story where Asher lets loose his hatred of religion, but it was all of one sentence and in many ways felt more of an obligatory thing than because he actually feels that way. I think he does, but the fire is going out.

And that’s enough out of me. This is over 700 words now. Nobody needs to write or read something that long!

★★★★☆

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Table of Contents:

LOCKDOWN TALES II An Introduction

XENOVORE

AN ALIEN ON CRETE

THE TRANSLATOR

SKIN

EELS

THE HOST

ANTIQUE BATTLEFIELDS

MORAL BIOLOGY

LONGEVITY AVERAGING

• All of My “Polity” Reviews
• All of My “Neal Asher” Reviews

Weaponized (Polity #22) 4Stars

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Weaponized
Series: Polity #22
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 481
Words: 163K

---

It’s been almost two years since I read Jack Four, the previous Polity book by Asher. I still vividly recall that book though because of all the pooping. Thankfully, in Weaponized, Asher moves away from that. However, what he moves into is as close to body horror as I ever want to get. I’ll talk more on that later.

This novel takes place before and around the beginning of the Prador War. We follow one Ursula as she moves into the ennui stage of life (somewhere around the 200 year mark for most humans, kind of like a very deadly puberty phase of life), then beyond it and then into the present, where she is trying to colonize a world outside of Polity control. Asher slices the story up into Past, Near Past and Present and slices each time line up and interweaves them. So for Chapter 1, you’ll have Present, about Ursula fighting on the planet. Then we’ll switch to Near Past about the colonists discovering whatever they are fighting in the Present. Then we’ll go to the Past which starts with her going through the military and getting kicked out because of the ennui. While it was handled well, I didn’t like it. It was very different from his previous novels and I suspect he did it just to see if he could but I sure hope he’s done with that little “phase”.

The pace here was just as unrelenting and furious as in Jack Four. Which leads into the body horror. This was also a Jain tech novel. By now, fans of Asher know how horrible Jain tech is, how pervasive, twisting and overpowering it is. But instead of the jain changing the colonists over a period of years, it happens within months, days and even hours. They change from humans to whatever is needed to survive, not only physically but also mentally and emotionally. It was degradation on every level. What made it worse is that they chose it, even if they were under the influence of the jain tech. It became so bad that a Polity golem sacrificed herself to set off the entire CTD arsenal in a prador dreadnaught. Ursula STILL managed to survive and the novel ends with her entity being taken to a Polity AI to be studied. It was brutal. Asher does a great job of showing that the Polity is not some benevolent technocracy but just a series of programs weighing what is the best outcome for the greatest number. There have been times it felt like he was promulgating the idea that they were truly benevolent, but either my perceptions have changed or his writing has changed. Either way, it feels much more inline with my worldview and I for one am ok with whatever the reality of the change actually is.

Another fantastic journey into the heart of a future as envisioned by Neal Asher. I continue to recommend this Polity series.

★★★★☆

---

From the Publisher

Click to Open

With the advent of new AI technology, Polity citizens now possess incredible lifespans. Yet they struggle to find meaning in their longevity, seeking danger and novelty in their increasingly mundane lives.

On a mission to find a brighter future for humanity, ex-soldier Ursula fosters a colony on the hostile planet Threpsis. Here, survival isn’t a given, and colonists thrive without their AI guidance. But when deadly alien raptors appear, Ursula and her companions find themselves forced to adapt in unprecedented ways. And they will be pushed to the very brink of what it means to be human.

As a desperate battle rages across the planet, Ursula must dig deep into her past if she is to save humanity’s future.

• All of My “Polity” Reviews
• All of My “Neal Asher” Reviews

Cthulhu’s Daughter and Other Horror Stories 1Star DNF@50%

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Cthulhu’s Daughter and Other Horror Stories
Series:
Author: Rhiannon Frater
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars /DNF@50%
Genre: Horror
Pages: 103 / 52
Words: 35K / 18K

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I was going to add this to the Cthulhu Anthology series, but once I opened this up and found only the first story was Cthulhu related, I put paid to that.

The rest of what I read was so wrapped up in mommy issues that I wondered why the author hadn’t sought out professional help. It was that bad.

Then I got to the lesbian vampire story and that put paid to the book. I wasn’t sad about stopping, that’s for sure.

★☆☆☆☆

---

Table of Contents

Click to Open

The Old Ones / Cthulhu’s Daughter

The Monster with the Human Face

The Vampires

The Werewolves

The Mummy

The Zombies

The Monsters from Beyond

Mirror of the Night and Other Weird Tales 3Stars

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Mirror of the Night and Other Weird Tales
Series: ———-
Author: Edwin Tubb
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Horror Anthology
Pages: 148
Words: 59K

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I was talking with somebody, at some time (I think it was Snapdragon Alcove) and she asked if I’d ever read anything by E.C Tubb. I hadn’t, so I decided to rectify that situation with this standalone collection of short stories by him.

Tubb was quite interested in the supernatural and more specifically, the occultic supernatural. But he was also just fine writing about messed up humanity.

One of the stories is about an older man who has had a stroke. He is convinced his wife has been taken over by an alien and in the end kills her. Only the reader knows everything the narrator is seeing and thinking has been corrupted by the stroke he had. That was the non-occultic kind of scary.

Then you have a story about a guy who robs a cultic temple and takes the jewel from the idol’s forehead. It is a snakegod and he convinces a friend to help him get back to Britain. On the ship ride back, he is mysteriously crushed to death in a locked cabin. The friend returns the jewel and becomes an adherent of the snake god cult.

Tubb is better known (or so I gather) for a science fiction series called Dumarest. I don’t know a thing about it, but after this collection, I’m going to track down a couple and see how they compare. While I wasn’t particularly wowed by this collection, it kept my interest and made me want to check out more by Tubb.

★★★☆☆

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Table of Contents:

MIRROR OF THE NIGHT

THE ANCIENT ALCHEMIST

THE ARTIST’S MODEL

SNAKE VENGEANCE

THE ENEMY WITHIN US

STATE OF MIND

SELL ME A DREAM

THE WINNER

THE WITCH OF PERONIA

SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

Cat Magic ★★☆☆☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Cat Magic
Author: Whitley Strieber & Jonathan Barry
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 353
Words: 134K

Ooooooh boy. * puffs out cheeks *

I’ve never read anything by Strieber before and wanted to give his writings a go. I knew he was horror’ish or real life aliens or something weird, so I thought I was prepared. I had no idea.

I saw the subtitle for this book on a later edition and it was “A Tale of Modern Witchcraft”. I really wish I had seen that before deciding to start with this book. I guess if I could sum up this book I’d go with “sexual orgies while children watch and the only sin is Guilt itself”. Ughhh. There was a lot of theological ideas put forth that I really had to disagree with. Not in an angry way but more in a “are you serious?” way.

While I have a bunch of Strieber’s books on tap, I think I’m going to try his Omega Point duology next. It’s about aliens somehow. If he puts forth more bad theology though, I’ll be done with him. I have no idea who this Barry fellow is or what part he played in writing the story. I wonder if he did the heavy lifting though.

Overall, this was not a good first impression and I certainly won’t be recommending Strieber even if his later books improve.

★★☆☆☆

Event Horizon (1997 Movie)

Event Horizon is a 1997 Space Horror movie directed by Paul Anderson, who later went on to direct many of the Resident Evil movies.

I really like this movie. If you had told me beforehand that I’d like a space horror movie that involves a possessed spaceship that kills it crew, well, I’d probably have looked at you funny and suggest you get your head checked.

The basic story is that in 2040 the Event Horizon, utilizing a new gravity drive to break the speed of light, disappears with all crew. The movie starts 7 years later when it mysteriously re-appears. A rescue ship is sent with a small crew to find out what happened. Along with them is Dr Weir, the creator of the gravity drive. They get to the ship, it’s abandoned but something is on board and begins killing them. Dr Weir gives in to be with what appears to be his dead wife and only 3 members of the rescue crew survive and make it back to earth. The Event Horizon goes back to the alternate dimension of hell that it came from.

On this rewatch, I realized that part of the reason I like this so much is because there are little flashes from the hell dimension that remind me of the cenobytes from Hellraiser, another horror movie that surprised me by how much I liked it. Nothing big mind you, just these very quick, almost too fast to process, images of the former crew and the current crew, going through tortures with chains and spikes, etc.

Of course, being a horror movie, there are some really stupid, illogical parts that you have to turn your brain off for. First and foremost, how does the entire scientific world forget the latin language in 50 years? The last message from the Event Horizon has the captain saying something in latin but no one on Earth recognizes it? Secondly, most of the crew do not act like seasoned space rescue operators. They act like the jomokes down at the local Cumberland Farms who hang out in the parking lot smoking weed, thus turning themselves into dumb as bricks idiots.

On the plus side, Sam Neal as Dr Weir, going off the deep end, is fantastic. He has guilt about his wife committing suicide way back when because he chose work over her and how the entity mimics her is a joy to behold. His unravelling is superb, as he’s a jerk to begin with. Laurence Fishburne is the captain of the rescue ship and he’s appropriately hard nosed yet caring.

The only part I wish had been different would have been the ending. 3 of the crew survive and are rescued. One of them thinks the rescuers are the possessed Dr Weir and has a break down but the movie ends very clearly with them having escaped. What I would have appreciated is a scene showing them still on the Event Horizon, living their rescue over and over and it failing each time. THAT would have been much more inline with the tone of the movie.

Man, can you believe I am suggesting a worse ending instead of a happier one? Surprises me too! I guess that plays a part in why I like the movie so much.

Dead Silence ★☆☆☆☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Dead Silence
Series: ———-
Authors: Stacey Barnes
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 319
Words: 109.5K

Synopsis:

From the Publisher & Me

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed―made obsolete―when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find is shocking: the Aurora, a famous luxury spaceliner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick search of the ship reveals something isn’t right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Messages scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold on to her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

Turns out everything was caused by a machine put on board the ship by a rival company that was supposed to make everyone feel dread and uneasiness. The ship used a new alloy and the interactions between the machine and ship drove everyone insane.

Claire survives as does her loverboy and they get rich and own their own shipping company. The end.

My Thoughts:

I went into this with very high hopes. Both Mogsy and Maddalena had reviewed it and while there were some little things that niggled at me, what they wrote sounded fantastic.

Things started out really great. I’m talking Event Horizon levels of great in fact. Which is exactly what I wanted and was looking for. Then I find out the main character is insane, so I can’t trust a word coming out of her mouth, then the whole “scary” situation gets “scyenzesplained” to me and THEN romance right at the end where the man knows exactly what to do and what to say like he’d read the main character’s insane mind and was pretty much the perfectest man ever.

It blew my mind. In a bad way. I was pretty angry in fact. To go from people ripping their own eyeballs out to scyenze to romance was more than I could take. Stacey Barnes took a space elevator ride straight to my Authors to Avoid list with this book. What gets me is that it DID start out so fantastic. WHY did she have to go and change things and ruin everything? I could smell the hotdog. I could see the hotdog. Then the author gave me a celery stick and acts like it was that all along. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

So if you want a scary story that is ruined by scyenze and romance, this is definitely the book for you. If I cared more, I’d cross post this review to all sorts of other platforms just to give people fair warning. But in about 10 years nobody will ever remember this book, because it truly is that bad. I’ll step aside and let Time be the author’s executioner.

⭐

Rating: 1 out of 5.

A Season in Carcosa (The King in Yellow Anthology #4) ★★★★✬

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: A Season in Carcosa
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #4
Editor: Joseph Pulver
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 268
Words: 100K

Synopsis:

Table of Contents

This Yellow Madness (introduction) by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

My Voice is Dead by Joel Lane

Beyond The Banks of the River Seine by Simon Strantzas

Movie Night at Phil’s by Don Webb

MS Found in a Chicago Hotel Room by Daniel Mills

it sees me when I’m not looking by Gary McMahon

Finale, Act Two by Ann K. Schwader

Yellow Bird Strings by Cate Gardner

The Theatre & Its Double by Edward Morris

The Hymn of the Hyades by Richard Gavin

Slick Black Bones and Soft Black Stars by Gemma Files

Not Enough Hope by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr

Whose Hearts are Pure Gold by Kristin Prevallet

April Dawn by Richard A. Lupoff

King Wolf by Anna Tambour

The White-Face At Dawn by Michael Kelly

Wishing Well by Cody Goodfellow

Sweetums by John Langan

The King Is Yellow by Pearce Hansen

D T by Laird Barron

Salvation In Yellow by Robin Spriggs

The Beat Hotel by Allyson Bird

My Thoughts:

My goodness, these anthologies are going up and down for me like a teetertotter! When they are good, they are REALLY GOOD and when it’s bad, it’s so bad I can’t finish them. Thankfully, this was on the upper part of the seesaw.

I went into this a bit worried since Pulver was the editor and I absolutely hated the previous book which was edited and written by him. Thankfully, he only contributed a small part of this. I did realize that I don’t like his writing, period though. There were 1 or 2 poems, which did nothing for me. But Pulver’s story was the only real let down. Not surprising but it’s what kept this from a full 5star.

But most of the other stories were flipping fantastic if you dig cosmic horror. From slides into madness and horror to the unveiling of horrific powers, these ran the gamut from shiver your backbone to a chill of deliciousness running down your spine to the completely inexplicably weird.

I really can’t say that any of these were “better” than the others, but the 2 I do remember are Yellow Bird Strings and Wishing Well. YBS was about a former puppeteer who by the end of the story has become the puppet himself. It was hard to tell if he was going mad or if it was all real. Exactly the right tone for a King in Yellow Story. WW on the other hand, had real IT (by Stephen King) vibes with 2 storylines about kids and them now as adults. A twisted tv show created by a cult of the KIY was the focus and the ending where the main character who appears to be a loser the whole time is revealed to be the son of the King in Yellow, or something like that. It was deliciously spine tingling.

Another absolute winner of a read and I’m pretty happy. These books are definitely not for everyone, in fact I’d say that the majority of readers wouldn’t go for The King in Yellow, but they fit me like a glove, so I’m going to revel in them while I can.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

• The King in Yellow & Other Stories (Book 1)
• In the Court of the Yellow King (Book 2)
• The King in Yellow Tales (Book 3)